Armenian Mountain Climber Airlifted from Turkey to Armenia After Medical Emergency

YEREVAN — A critically ill Armenian woman has been urgently evacuated to Armenia from Turkey in a rare crossing of the closed border between the two neighboring countries, a senior official in Yerevan said on Friday.

Gor Tsarukyan, the director of the Armenian government’s Information and Public Relations Center, said she fell into diabetic coma and was rushed to a hospital in the eastern Turkish town of Dogubayazit after climbing Mount Ararat close to the Armenian border.

“Turkish doctors in the Dogubayazit hospital managed to slightly stabilize the woman’s condition. The doctors insisted that her transfer to Armenia is necessary,” Tsarukyan wrote on Facebook.

She was transported to Armenia by air, the official said, also posting a video of a helicopter carrying the patient landing outside Yerevan’s Erebuni hospital.

Tsarukyan also said it took “almost a day” to organize the medical evacuation. He did not reveal Armenian and Turkish officials or government bodies who arranged it.

Turkey has kept its border with Armenia closed for over three decades in a show of support for Azerbaijan. It continues to make the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations conditional on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal sought by Baku. Ankara stuck to this precondition after Turkish and Armenian officials met on the border late last month for a fresh round of normalization talks.

The two sides agreed two years ago to open the border for Armenian and Turkish diplomatic passport holders as well as citizens of third countries. Ankara appears to have been dragging its feet over the implementation of that agreement.